Keep Rollin’

Another day, another commute by fixed gear bike into work to save the calf.

I decided to take the same route as yesterday and see if it was any quicker rolling through the city. The public transport strike is over – well, until they decide to go out again which could be later in the day – and the roads should be a little easier to handle.

The route was the same as yesterday but I let my legs roll around a little faster on the descent and then through the Presque Isle, too. All of this made the commute slightly faster than it was yesterday and I arrived in the office all of two minutes earlier than I did the day before.

Of course, being only 5km, there’s a limit to how fast I can make it in to work. A lot depends on the traffic signals and one red light would probably end up costing me any gains from any acceleration through the city. I was lucky this morning and didn’t really hit a red light, and when there was a red light ahead I was working my way through the line of cars and hitting the light just as it turned green. Nice, right?

I even managed a top five time for a segment on Strava.

I hit fourth for the Saone to Saxe segment and only a handful of seconds off a clear second or maybe even first place. That’s all well and good and a nice surprise on opening up Strava but it’s the sort of segment that is almost impossible to take safely. You not only shoot through about five or six different traffic signals which would have to be green, you’d also need a pretty clear road. It’s the sort of segment you only really set records on at 3am on a Monday morning when no one is around and the only danger is the odd early morning drunk tossing bottles.